How to secure your iPhone's Internet connection

If I had a buck for every time I've reminded someone to pay attention to how secure his or her Internet connection is, I'd be able to buy Apple, Google, and Microsoft — and have enough spare change for a cup of coffee.

So let's talk about staying safe on one of the more popular mobile devices — the iPhone.

Just like your laptop, tablet, or other mobile device, the iPhone is incredibly vulnerable when you decide to use a public Wi-Fi network. Someone could hijack your Twitter or Facebook accounts, steal passwords, or even take a peek at your email and instant message conversations.

So what can you do to stay safe? You can create and maintain a secure Internet connection by using a virtual private network (VPN). And while that sounds like it'd be difficult to set up, it can actually be done with just a few taps and an app called Hotspot Shield VPN.

Hotspot Shield

Hotspot Shield VPN comes from AnchorFree, a company known for its desktop VPN software, and it can be downloaded from the Apple App Store. The app itself is free, but the associated service will cost you $1/month or $10/year. (There's a free 7-day trial available if you want to give the app a shot before shelling out cash.)

Once installed, the app will run in the background and keep your Internet sessions safe. It will protect third-party apps, the iPhone's built-in Safari browser, and even encrypt your iMessage conversations.

It's worth pointing out that using a VPN service means you are trusting a third-party — such as AnchorFree — with all your data as everything passes through the secure tunnel created by the software. That's quite a leap of faith, but AnchorFree has a pretty solid history when it comes to keeping Internet browsing sessions private and secure. Its desktop software does occasionally include what some folks consider to be (optional) adware.

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